FSP and Silverstone PSU Compared in Crossfire Stress Test

We take a look at two high wattage power supplies from companies known for their solid product lines; the Silverstone DA750 model features a single 12v rail and is rated at 750W. The FSP Epsilon has four 12v rails and combined offers up to 900W. We stress test these units in a real world environment with the most power hungry vga cards out there, two ATI HD 2900 XT in Crossfire. Read on to find out if they pass our tests

Introduction

Introduction

Earlier this year Silverstone sent us one of their higher end power supplies which we put to use with two GeForce 8800GTS 320MB graphics cards in SLI, though once we were about to stress test this PSU ATI released their HD 2900 XT series VGA cards which were crowned as new king of the hill when it comes down to power consumption. So now with two HIS HD 2900 XT's a new contender, FSP branded, an excellent opportunity has arrived to put two very different high-end PSU products through a test.

Founded in 2003, Silverstone started their quest of providing products that create inspirations. They have expanded their lines of products and types of products they produce, giving customers a wide selection of choices. As they continued to pride themselves in providing the highest level of standards in designing and manufacturing computer enclosures, power supplies, and accessories, Silverstone have become an established leader in its field. For today we're taking a look at one of their Decathlon products, here is the Silverstone DA750:

FSP has been around since 1993 and has become the 6th largest power supply vendor in the world over all this time. They had plenty competition down their road to success and sure do know how to combine quality products with excellent service. For 2007, FSP is focusing on greener power, and with double HD 2900 XT's installed we have some excellent equipment to test the efficiency of one of their latest power supplies, here is the Epsilon 900W:

Before we compare the performance of the Silverstone DA750 and EPS Epsilon 900W in our review, let's have a peak at what each manufacturer offers inside their box ->

Comment
from MTBF@ 2010/03/10

FORTRON / FSP Power Supply Units are unreliable hardware devices.
Failed just after 784 days of normal use (about 3500 hours only)!.

Comment
from jmke@ 2010/03/10

MTBF doesn't guarantee you a minimum life-time expectancy FYI

Comment
from MTBF@ 2010/03/10

Yes, 2 years but warranty was over since 1,5 month only.

Comment
from jmke@ 2010/03/10

how many FSP PSU do you own?

Comment
from MTBF@ 2010/03/10

Just one, Epsilon 700w definitively useless by now also it was properly protected with an UPS.
Such material is normally designed for 100,000 hours.

Comment
from jmke@ 2010/03/10

Quote:

Such material is normally designed for 100,000 hours.

no, it has MTBF of 100.000 hours. And MTBF != LifeTime

Quote:

nother common misconception about the MTBF is that it specifies the time (on average) when the probability of failure equals the probability of not having a failure (i.e. a reliability of 50%). This is only true for certain symmetric distributions. In many cases, such as the (non-symmetric) exponential distribution, this is not the case. In particular, for an exponential failure distribution, the probability that an item will fail at or before the MTBF is approximately 0.63 (i.e. the reliability at the MTBF is 37%). For typical distributions with some variance, MTBF only represents a top-level aggregate statistic, and thus is not suitable for predicting specific time to failure, the uncertainty arising from the variability in the time-to-failure distribution.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_ti...sconcepti ons

you can't decide on experience with ONE sample that a whole range of products is broken/bad.

Comment
from MTBF@ 2010/03/10

I agree with you and the above MTBF but when you pay US$200 for a device you don't expect that you should do it again 2 years later... :-)
Especially when the breakdown is obviously the device itself.

Comment
from jmke@ 2010/03/10

I've had laptops break down a week after their warranty has expired, sometimes you get the short end of the stick
the other 200 laptops kept working years after their warranty expired.... that's life

Comment
from EsaT@ 2010/03/24

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmke

you can't decide on experience with ONE sample that a whole range of products is broken/bad.

Epsilon platform based PSUs commonly show "ripple happiness" from the start (even some advertised PSU specs breaking ATX specification) and FSP uses mostly cheap capacitors avoided by many makers.
So with such product propability of getting that short end of the stick is simply higher.

Comment
from ToyTen@ 2010/04/01

I am a lucky owner of an 800w Epsilon PSU then. Since the Geforce 8800GTX and I used those in SLI with a Q600 for more than one year. My PSU is still there.
Not saying at all that problems never occur of course, but it seemed to me that a positive feedback about those PSU's was welcome here, supplying a 5870 and an I7 950 @ 3200Mhz with 4Ghz UCLK, 3 HDD and 6Gigs of memory. Also lots of fan for my water cooling.